The Bulgarian astronaut program began in 1977 when members of the Bulgarian People's Air Force where trained for space tasks. Bulgaria is the only country from the Intercosmos program to send two cosmonauts into space in a time when space missions were reserved to the world powers.
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Bulgaria's space activities have their beginning in August 1964, when the Minister of Defence of the Soviet Union, Marshal Malinovski, organized a meeting with the Bulgarian military attaché at the country's embassy in Moscow. Lieutenant-General Zakhari Zakhariev discussed with Malinovski the issue of sending Bulgarians into space onboard of a Soviet spacecraft. Doing so he even proposed sending already checked and approved air force officers. It seems that the time for that hadn't come yet. The space ships the Soviet Union has developed at that time were not up to the requirements for that task.
This changed a decade later and, according to the Interkosmos program, a leading group of countries had sent air force officers for space training. The countries in that group were the former Czechoslovakia, Poland and the former German Democratic Republic (East Germany). Shortly afterwards a second group of countries sent personnel to the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonauts Training Center. The countries were Bulgaria, Cuba, Hungary, Mongolia and Romania.
Tests and evaluations for the Bulgarian group of astronauts started in 1977, with all of the candidates being fighter pilots of the Bulgarian People's Air Force. The reason for that is the requirement stated that all the candidates should be graduates of the Georgi Benkovski Higher People's Air Force School between 1964 and 1972. In other words the absolute requirement is for a science degree (which the school starts issuing in 1964) and at least 3 years of regular flying activity. Hundreds of air force flight officers had filled the papers for that. The Aeromedical Commission of the Air Force evaluated the candidates and those who had qualified were sent to the Sofia Military Hospital for a complete medical examination lasting several weeks. After the severe standards had drastically reduced the number of candidates, the age limit of the volunteers had to raised in order to bring more officers in the evaluation group. The 15 men ranged in their air force experience from squadron leader to executive officer of an air regiment. After the final examinations the final group comprised 6 officers, those being:
Of those Dzhourov and Radev left the group for a number of reasons and the remaining four left for Moscow. There, the Soviet physicians found that Yovchev has a cardiological problem. According to their judgement the main trainee would be Georgi Ivanov and the first substitute - Alexander Alexandrov.
During his visit to the USSR, the Bulgarian Minister of People's Defence Army, General Dobri Dzhourov, had come to an agreement with the Soviet government about sending a second Bulgarian cosmonaut to space onboard a Soviet spacecraft. The official paper concerning the training, and preparation, and execution of a joint Soviet-Bulgarian space mission was signed in Moscow on the August 22, 1986.
The Bulgarian officials made the decision that the financial requirements for that would be met by the constructing of science equipment at the cost of about $14 million, which would be transferred to the Soviet Union. The technology needed for the production was donated by the USSR. After a thorough medical evaluation of more than 300 air force flight officers, ten candidates were approved, of which the Soviet physicians who were sent to Bulgaria approved four:
As in the preparations for the previous Bulgarian mission after the candidates arrived in Moscow the soviet physicians found that Plamen Alexandrov had health problems. Of the remainder Alexander Alexandrov was approved for the main trainee post and Krasimir Stoyanov was destined to be the first substitute.